FILM
THE FRENCH DISPATCH: TRACKING ALL THE VISUAL NUANCES AND MOVING PARTS FOR SEVERAL FILMS IN ONE By CHRIS McGOWAN
Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Searchlight Pictures. TOP: The French Dispatch’s gruff lead editor and founder Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) in his office. OPPOSITE TOP: Travel writer Hersaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) taking his bicycle on the metro. The Sazerac bike-riding sequence involved miniatures and live-action elements. OPPOSITE MIDDLE AND BOTTOM: Images of the front (after and before) and the rear of The French Dispatch office. In an opening scene, a waiter from a street café scales several flights of stairs in the rear of the building to deliver a tray full of cocktails and apéritifs to an editorial meeting.
Wes Anderson’s visually dazzling The French Dispatch harkens back to a pre-digital era when print magazines had wide readership and filmmakers relied on celluloid and optical effects. Writerdirector Anderson’s movie is structured like an issue of The New Yorker magazine, and its visuals utilize color and black-and-white film, miniatures, practical effects, tableaux vivant, elaborate tracking shots, differing aspect ratios and an exceedingly busy art department. Yet, the Digital Age is also ever-present in the film. Which scenes have visual effects we wouldn’t suspect? Responds Editor Andrew Weisblum, “Well, the whole film. Every scene has VFX.” Weisblum continues, “VFX becomes part of an ongoing tool for refining and tinkering with the film, both editorially and in terms of production design and all other details. It’s an essential role [in The French Dispatch]. It’s not meant to call attention to itself. It’s also not meant necessarily to be photoreal. It’s more of a design element.” He estimates there were “maybe four or five hundred” VFX shots. In addition, there is a three-minute, 2D-animated vignette that is part of a larger live-action story. “There wasn’t a VFX department per se until late in the postproduction process. It was primarily handled through editorial,” remarks Weisblum, who more or less filled the role of a visual effects supervisor, along with producer Jeremy Dawson, who had worked as a VFX supervisor before. “There was a lot of discussion on set with the art department and everyone else where we’d
88 • VFXVOICE.COM SPRING 2022
PG 88-91 FRENCH DISPATCH.indd 88
2/28/22 2:47 PM
